Social Media and Platforms’ Affordances
My use of social media is circumscribed to inter-personal communication and the need for an online presence for my artist practice business. I have two profiles setup on Facebook, my own, Daniele Poidomani and its associated business page Memetica.
My online public self, Daniele Poidomani is authentic. Social media entered my life when my social sense of self was already quite formed and reliant on interpersonal connections. I felt no need or intrigue for the creation of a ‘persona’ in what Rosemary Pennington (2018) aptly defines the ‘third space’. My business profile, on the other hand, does leverage on the identity’s ambiguity afforded by the platform.
Although administratively Memetica is a sole trader business, on Facebook it is deliberately unclear whether it represents a company or an independent artist. The result of such ambiguity has proven positive. Festivals and art organisation now often engage with me as a company to discuss projects beyond the capability of an individual. Of course, I have a network of collaborators I can rely on to cover the commission, yet it was much harder to get this sort of offers when my public existence was that of an individual artist.
A lack of fluency in what James Meese et al. (2015 p. 1819), call the “platform’s vernacular” is preventing me to capitalize on the affordances useful for my business. Within the platform’s vernacular not only the selfie but also other types of images now stand as “phatic communication” in the way they are “intended to maintain relationships, rather than the actual exchange of information” (Meikle and Young p 73). The prepping of canvas or the sight of an empty stage are trivial moments of artistic practices. They had no room for public display pre-social media but now they regularly appear in online photos for their phatic value. They signal that the practitioners are at work, their identity as creators or performer is current, and they are relating with the community. Given my current unfamiliarity with such type of communication, I find it hard to easily produce such conversations and therefore I miss out on engaging with the audience as much as it would benefit my practice.
I admit that such lack of proficiency also stems from a sense of authenticity I would need to overcome for a successful promotion of Memetica’s page. Yet this is about my personal relationship with the media. I do not suggest I otherwise equate inauthenticity with the employment of phatic communication on social platforms.
For the native or naturalized engaged users of social media the employ the platform’s vernacular is not a measure of veracity but a simple expression of fluency. It is through such user in fact, that the appropriation of the platform features gives life to unpredicted affordances then available to the wider community.
Clichés likening superficiality to selfies and external look may not take into consideration the responsibility and weight of assumed identities. Regardless of the initial motivations for it, the adoption of a public look and image invests the wearer with a social agency that becomes as real as the society they operate in. In the words of the Batman ‘I wear a mask not to hide who I am but to create what I am.’
Reference list
Meese, J, Gibbs, M, Carter, M, Arnold, M, Nansen, B & Kohn, T 2015, 'Selfies at funerals: Mourning and presencing on social media platforms', International Journal of Communication, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1818–1831, <http://ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edselc&AN=edselc.2-52.0-84978773687>, viewed 3 September 2020.
Meikle, G & Young, S 2012, ‘Media convergence : networked digital media in everyday life’ Palgrave Macmillan, London
Pennington, R 2018, 'Social media as third spaces? Exploring Muslim identity and connection in Tumblr', International Communication Gazette, vol. 80, no. 7, pp. 620–636, <https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048518802208>, viewed 3 September 2020.